A Summary Of Brad Bird’s Talk About Classic Disney Films

If you missed Brad Bird’s talk in San Francisco about “The Disney Treatment: Walt’s Versions of Classic Stories,” the Walt Disney Family Museum blog offers this lengthy summary of the talk. Brad sounds sharp as usual:

Brad pointed out that while Snow White had a very simple opening, it showed what a good storyteller Walt was. When the book of the Snow White fairy tale opens, it has a bit of a “silent movie” approach, with text that audiences have to read. When the Queen’s castle is revealed, Brad noted, “Instead of happy music it begins with mysterious music, which immediately puts you in a different state of mind. The coolest thing is he (Walt) instinctively begins with not only the Queen, but also the mirror. He shows right away she is a slave to her own image.”

I hope he never stops making movies, but if he does he could be a film analyst, he is one of the best I’ve ever heard.

Mac

A slave to her own image, yes. Fun fact: It was only after seeing Walt Disney’s Snow White that Sartre came up with the idea for No Exit.

Scarabim

Nice to see that Bird “gets” what Walt contributed to his films. Wish Bird would join the Disney Animation story department – it could sure use him.

A Writer

why would Brad Bird a block buster director join Disney’s story team for a job?

lol

Mister Twister

Snow White is a beautifully rotoscoped film with a dull story and 0-dimentional characters.

Let the thumbs down flow.

ctrayn

Okay, well let’s find you a TARDIS and get you back to the late 1930s so YOU can make the first fully-colored, fully-scored feature-length animated film of its kind. Mind you, Walt Disney didn’t have 75 years of precedent in the animated feature arena to build off of, and it was his (as well as the directors’) first full-length picture, and it was made during a time when next to no one took cartoons seriously, and he had the bank breathing down his neck. So luckily you’ll be at a nice advantage.

Honestly, art isn’t made in a vacuum. You need to take the movie’s context into consideration, especially in a case such as this where it is the first of its kind. I realize it wasn’t the first animated feature up to that point, but it was the first to fit the modern bill of an animated movie, and it was extremely ambitious given the circumstances. Nobody looks at the Wright Brothers’ airplane and goes “Wow, what a shitty-ass vehicle”. You respect it for being the first. Because everything’s got to start somewhere.

And really, no one likes the commenter that puts out an unpopular opinion and literally ASKS people to be pissed at him. That’s called trolling, and is frowned upon in most societies. And your threat kind of loses its effectiveness when there is not, in fact, a thumbs down option on here.

Mister Twister

We both know the Time Lord only care for adventures Walt Disney company cannot sue him for.

James

‘Snow White is a beautifully rotoscoped film with a dull story and 0-dimentional characters.’

It also happens to be the most important animated film of all time…

Scarabim

Really? However did Walt manage to rotoscope all those dwarfs, not to mention all of the squirrels and deer and birds and stuff? Guess he really WAS a genius.

If Snow White WAS all rotoscoped, she would have moved a lot more smoothly – and artificially – than she did. Watch Fleischer’s “Gulliver’s Travels”if you don’t believe me.